06 November 2007

heading out to sea...

25/09-2007We woke up rather early once again. To give the birdies the paparazzi treatment, of course. Some of the more interesting specimens included an African paradise flycatcher and a scarlet-chested sunbird. And of course there were tons of little yellow weaver birds darting around here and there. Yes, I really do get excited over stuff like this. Yes, it annoys the hell out of boyfriend of feitpingvin ;-)

Birds weren't the only thing we saw. From the veranda (on the 2nd floor of the house), we watched as the groundkeeper washed our car. We didn't ask for this, so we were pleasantly surprised over the situation. The car was quite filthy, especially after the dustbath it got at Sani, and we had been thinking of taking it to a car wash. This kind gesture made our lives a lot easier. He got a nice tip for this! :-)

Breakfast was a big, delicious affair, as expected. We started with some lovely oatmeal; I had mine with fruit and some yoghurt. This was followed by a cheese and mushroom omelette, bacon, and kudu sausage! Kudu! Oh, it was soooo good! Why can't I get stuff like that here? *sigh*

We had a good chat with our hostess and her son about where to go along our route. Among the places that were recommended – Stormsrivier and The Heads at Knysna. We were also ordered to do the adventure tour when we got to Cango Caves ;-)

I didn't write very many notes for this part of the trip. We stopped at Grahamstown for lunch. Grahamstown has a lot of nice old buildings, but I wasn't really in the mood to photograph anything. We ate at Dulcé Café. I ordered grilled vegetables with cheese and tomato-basil sauce (I was in the mood for something vegetarian), and boyfriend of feitpingvin ordered tortillas. Both were lovely :-)

We arrived at Jeffreys Bay and settled into our accommodation – Jeffreys Bay Backpackers. It was OK; a bit on the expensive side for what we got, considering it was a backpacker place. Our room was en-suite, and the passageway to the bathroom/shower was very narrow. We're not that big and we had to squeeze through. It was also very obvious that Jeffreys Bay is known for surfing, as the backpackers' was very set-up for people with surfboards.

It was very windy there when we went out for a walk. Windy and somewhat chilly. I tried photographing seagulls that were kind of floating in the wind, but they kept floating away too quickly. Heh. Plus there was sand blowing on my lens and in my eyes, and that's not cool. The beach is surely a very nice to be when the weather is good - the sand is nice and white and the water is bright blue and inviting. We did see this one guy getting into the water, so I can't imagine the water being that cold. Either that or he's a crazy Scandinavian ;-)

We ate dinner at The Mexican, a sort of pseudo-Mexican restaurant. We had jalepeño poppers for our starter and the seafood platter for two for our main course. The poppers were OK but not really what I wanted at the time... couldn't really eat them, so I gave them to boyfriend of feitpingvin, who gobbled them down with no problem whatsoever ;-)

The seafood platter – dang! Is this for 2 people or for 10? ;-) The Neverending Seafood Platter of Ring of Fat Doom. Let's see... fish, mussels in sauce, prawns, calamari, rice, pommes frites... lots of food. Lots of tasty food. This was quite good... but very filling!

Our wine was the Hill & Dale Sauvignon Blanc 2006.color: (it was too dark here to be able to see this)nose: honey melon, green apples, slight pear, green pepper, and licheepalate: fresh, almost the feel of carbonation, flavor of melon, green apples. Slight «bite» in the aftertastegrade: :-)+

A little observation - "everyone" here is white. Even the wait and bar staff (they are surf instructors/pro or semi-pro surfers by day, wait and bar staff by night). The city also seems very "we cater to the wealthy who want a beach holiday."